King Fahd's marital woes to be aired in open court

King Fahd

LONDON - The ailing King Fahd, one of the world's richest and most powerful men, is facing an embarrassing public showdown in a British court this year with a woman who claims to be his estranged wife.

The 83-year-old Saudi Arabian ruler is being sued by Janan Harb for a share of his 32 billion ($81.6 billion) fortune over his alleged failure to adequately provide for her.

The legal battle has been conducted in total secrecy, so much so that the case was given a fictitious name to protect the King's identity and subject to the most stringent orders designed to keep it out of the media.

But now Harb has won a significant victory in what promises to be a long and contentious dispute.

Three appeal court judges have granted her permission to appeal against a ruling that the King was entitled to sovereign immunity, and have ruled that the appeal must be held in open court. So the stage is set for a public airing of the affairs of the notoriously secretive Saudi royal family, of which King Fahd is head.

Jordanian-born Harb, who lives in Kensington, West London, is described by friends as "incredibly strong-willed and determined".

Her action - if successful - could prove to be the most lucrative maintenance settlement ever agreed by a British court.

She is claiming under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 that the King "wilfully neglected" to maintain her.

The 57-year-old says she is one of the King's three wives.

A friend said that she still loved him but blamed his advisers for her predicament. "What she is doing is without precedence in the Middle East, for the wife of a ruler to sue him for maintenance, but she wants to see justice done."

King Fahd is recovering in hospital in Saudi Arabia after being admitted with pneumonia, fever and respiratory complications in May.

In a statement yesterday the Saudi Interior Ministry said the monarch's health was steadily improving. It was the first official report on his condition for over a week.

The day to day running of the world's largest oil exporter passed to 81-year-old Crown Prince Abdullah in 1995 after King Fahd suffered a stroke.

Lawyers acting for Harb successfully challenged a decision made by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss in December that Fahd enjoyed sovereign immunity from the maintenance proceedings.

The case was brought under laws designed to protect heads of state from prosecution in overseas courts.

At the hearing, Butler-Sloss, then president of the High Court's Family Division, also imposed strict reporting restrictions on the case.

She assigned the false name "Maple v Maple", using the surname of the district judge involved in an earlier stage of the case to disguise the identity of the King.

Butler-Sloss told the court that the King was entitled to secrecy.

"Once the press are aware of this they will dig a great deal deeper and there will be a great deal of information which they will be able to put into the public domain."

Last month, however, the three appeal court judges overturned her decisions, and the case challenging King Fahd's immunity from prosecution will now be heard in open court in November.

Lawyers for the King sought to argue that the immunity appeal should be held in private to protect his "dignity" under the Geneva Convention.

However, the judges said it was unprecedented in the last decade for such a case to be heard in secret and concluded Butler-Sloss had "misdirected herself" in agreeing to it.

In the Appeal Court judgment, now made public, Lord Justice Thorpe said: "Clearly Mrs Harb was seen as a potential source of embarrassment. That is well illustrated by the fact that on March 1, 2001, an undisclosed principal [in reality the King] had paid Mrs Harb a very substantial sum for entering into a binding deed of confidentiality covering all aspects of her past relationship with the King."

If Harb were to be deprived of the right to have her claim heard, ruled Thorpe, it should "not be secret justice".

"The identity of the sovereign seems to me to be relevant to any public debate of the issues raised by the plea of immunity," he said in his ruling. "The family justice system needs to be cautious of adopting fictions such as Maple v Maple that its critics can label as deceitful or designed to shield its workings from public scrutiny".

If the court finds for Harb, the maintenance proceedings will return to the Family Division sometime next year when they will be heard in private.

King Fahd ascended to the Saudi throne in June 1982, when the desert kingdom was enjoying the peak of the petrodollar boom.

He became custodian of Islam's two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, and assumed control of a vast personal fortune. As well as a lavish palace in Saudi Arabia, he owns a 100-room property in Marbella in southern Spain, called the Mar Mar Palace, modelled on the White House in Washington.

The King's arrival in Marbella is always keenly awaited by local traders. During a visit in 2002 he was said to have been accompanied by a "caravan" of 3000 people.

Such is the extravagance that his mere presence is said to generate 1 million a day for the local economy.

Royal privilege

Born in 1923, Fahd succeeded his brother King Khaled in June 1982.

He became Saudi Arabia's fifth leader since the state was founded by his father, Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, in 1932.

As well as a lavish palace in Saudi Arabia, he owns a 100-room property in Marbella in southern Spain.

The King's 71m yacht, Al-Diriyah, is one of the largest and most opulent in the world. It regularly stands guard off shore during his European sojourns.

The King also has a Boeing 747 at his disposal complete with a mobile intensive care unit.

- INDEPENDENT